Background: Recent research has documented individual differences in the reading profiles of skilled native English readers using a behavioural marker of holistic visual word processing (orientation sensitivity). A more holistic word reading profile is associated with a weaker correlation with phonological decoding for word identification.…

Previous research has established that readers' eye movements are sensitive to the difficulty with which a word is processed. One important factor that influences processing is the fit of a word within the wider context, including its plausibility. Here we explore the influence of plausibility in counterfactual language processing. Counterfactuals…

Recent research on negation has demonstrated that while readers are aware that this text construction is difficult, they seem to be able to do little to improve their comprehension. The present research evaluated whether a change in typeface could improve comprehension and metacomprehension of negation. Results indicated that while readers were…

Eight experiments evaluated a core assumption of several theories of text processing, the shared resource assumption, which states that component text processes share limited processing resources. Short texts each contained two critical sentences that together warranted a causal inference. The syntactic structure of the second sentence was either…

A review of the Writer Rabbit software program details its multiple classroom uses, focusing on language arts activities such as practicing identification and classification of sentence parts, practicing spelling, and inventing stories. (CB)

We present interpretation-based processing--a theory of sentence processing that builds a syntactic and a semantic representation for a sentence and assigns an interpretation to the sentence as soon as possible. That interpretation can further participate in comprehension and in lexical processing and is vital for relating the sentence to the…

Processing time and memory for sentences were examined as a function of the degree of semantic and causal relatedness between sentences in short narratives. In Experiments 1-2B, semantic and causal relatedness between sentence pairs was independently manipulated. Causal relatedness was assessed through pretesting and semantic relatedness was…

A prevalent assumption in text comprehension research is that many aspects of text processing are automatic, with automaticity typically defined in terms of properties (e.g., speed and effort). The present research advocates conceptualization of automaticity in terms of underlying mechanisms and evaluates two such accounts, a…

Reports on a small pilot study that investigated the effect of word processing on the revision of six college freshmen. The results suggested that word processing did not encourage students to revise more extensively. (HOD)

Assesses the utility of the analyses within the "Writer's Workbench" (an advanced text editor) range. Compares professional prose with first-year college student essays, using readability, sentence variety, sentence structure, parts of speech, vocabulary, and usage. (MS)

A study of the effects of a typing tutor plus a computer-based word processor versus paper and pencil on the writing of six elementary students with behavioral disorders found small improvements in capitalization, spelling, punctuation, and complete sentences attributable to either method, though story length increased for three of six students…

Summarizes five studies related to computerized language education: (1) speech synthesizers and children's writing abilities; (2) comparison of Writing to Read program and traditional teaching; (3) evaluation of Writing to Read program; (4) deaf adolescents and sentence construction; and (5) student attitudes toward writing with computers vs.…